In tweets, press conferences, and an awkward, bass-thumping MTV-style tour of his Gracie Mansion crib, Mayor Eric Adams dubbed last week "housing week," a term the mayor seems to have coined specifically to tout his administration's housing accomplishments.
During housing week, Adams made some bold claims: that his administration has "created, preserved, or planned" 426,800 homes for New Yorkers, that it will produce more housing than both the Michael Bloomberg and Bill de Blasio administrations combined, and that it represents the "most pro-housing administration" in all of New York City history.
"I don't know how many times we have to say it, this is the most pro-housing administration in the history of the city and we're building affordable housing in the process," Adams said on Friday. "The numbers don't lie."
Numbers don't lie, but Hizzoner's mathematics do require a few mental backflips and some creative addition before they make complete sense. And it's more accurate to say Adams is "pro-housing production," versus, say, "pro-renter." He refused to carry out laws passed by the City Council in 2023 that would have made more New Yorkers eligible for rental assistance through the City's housing voucher program, CityFHEPS, and under his mayoralty, a state comptroller audit found that delays and poor oversight made it more difficult for CityFHEPS renters to find housing. Meanwhile, rent-stabilized tenants saw rent hikes each year during the Adams administration, which Cea Weaver, the director of the New York State Tenant Bloc, directly blamed on a "corrupt and incompetent" Adams.
But putting all of that aside, we at Hell Gate decided to take a closer look at the claims Adams made during his housing week tour, and whether Adams will go down in history as the most pro-housing mayor this city has ever seen.
(Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)
More housing than Bloom-blasio?
After taking a ceremonial shovel to the dirt on a site in Coney Island, Adams credited his administration for creating more housing than in the two decades of de Blasio and Bloomberg's reign.
"We have broken records after records," Adams said at the groundbreaking of 1709 Surf Avenue last week. "When we're done, shovels in the ground, [we'll have] more housing in three years and seven months than 12 years of Bloomberg, eight years of de Blasio combined."
If Adams was referring to housing built during his administration, that statement was patently false. Between 2002 and 2021, when Bloomberg and de Blasio were mayor, New York City saw around 413,000 new residential units built, compared with around 88,000 apartments built during the first three years of the Adams administration, according to Department of City Planning data and reports. (And no, there's no way the city will make up that 325,000 unit gap in 2025.)
But on Friday, HPD officials clarified that Adams was actually comparing the number of units that his rezonings would eventually create (about 130,000 units) with the apartments that de Blasio and Bloomberg's rezonings were projected to create (at 33,000 units and 69,000 units respectively). As the Real Deal's Erik Engquist noted, that metric favors Adams, as the only mayor to have passed a citywide rezoning.
It's also a weird claim to make while breaking ground on the 420-unit building at 1709 Surf Avenue, which is part of a three-building complex that first began construction in 2018 during the then-de Blasio administration, and was only made possible by a 2009 Bloomberg administration rezoning, which designated the beachfront block for residential use.
That Surf Avenue building is one of many examples that show how New York City housing is built over the course of generations—not individual mayors. For example, Adams celebrated the opening of 174 new affordable apartments at the new Inwood Library last year, which de Blasio's administration first pitched in 2017; 50 new affordable apartments on top of Sunset Park's new public library in 2023, a project that has been in the works since 2015 (when Adams was Brooklyn borough president); 129 affordable units and supportive housing beds at 50 Nevins Street, which first broke ground under then-governor Andrew Cuomo in 2019; and the ongoing construction on a massive, 2,500-unit development in Willets Point in Queens, a project first announced by then-Mayor Bloomberg all the way back in 2007.
"Every administration builds on the prior administration," said Vicki Been, the faculty director for New York University’s Furman Center and the former deputy mayor for housing and economic development under then-mayor Bill de Blasio. "The work on Willets Point has literally been going on since the Bloomberg administration, and every single administration has pushed the ball further down the court."
(Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)
Adams's 426,800 'created, preserved, or planned' homes
Lit by harsh fluorescents last Friday, Adams announced that his administration had "created, preserved, or planned" for 426,800 homes for New Yorkers, to the cheers of City administrators lined up behind him.
"We are really pleased with this number," Adams said during the press conference. That's 426,800 homes, he added, "for New Yorkers that will now or soon have a roof over their heads and a place to sleep at night."
It's a great number, one that puts Adams closer to his "moonshot" housing goal of creating 500,000 housing units by 2032 (though he's still 73,200 units short, which is more apartments than the city built in 2023 and 2024 combined). But just under half of those 426,800 apartments, or 46 percent, don't exist yet.
Roughly 197,000 of those units are in various stages of planning, Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) officials explained on Friday. That includes thousands of proposed apartments that have yet to go through the City's lengthy land use review process, 6,000 apartments that are supposed to be created through the now-stalled Brooklyn Marine Terminal project, and 82,000 units expected to be built over the next 15 years through the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity rezonings.
Many of these units will not "soon" be available for New Yorkers trying to survive the city's increasingly expensive rental market. They will be constructed over the next 15 years through 2040, eight years after Adams hopes to have created his half-a-million housing units and far beyond any potential Adams second term. (As for the 95,100 units the administration has "created," that refers to projects financed by HPD, not necessarily buildings that have wrapped up construction.)
It's also likely that some of Adams's planned projects will deliver fewer units than expected, as developments often have their housing totals winnowed down during a long-winded planning process. (Just look at the Brooklyn Marine Terminal project, which called for between 7,000 and 9,000 apartments as of March, and now calls for 6,000.)
Asked on Friday if he was concerned that the number might be inflated, Adams replied, "No."
"If there's one skill we have, we know how to land the plane," Adams told reporters on Friday. "We'll be fine. We're going to get it done."
Adams won't be around to get all of those 426,800 units across the finish line, but his administration has already helped "preserve" around 134,700 existing units across the city. That number includes 12,400 New York City Housing Authority apartments that will become Section 8 housing through a City program, and 3,700 NYCHA units that will be rehabilitated under NYCHA's Comprehensive Modernization program.
Adams's key victory: City of Yes
While Adams might be a little loose with his math, he does deserve credit for the City of Yes rezoning, which will massively reshape New York City by encouraging new, denser development across the five boroughs. Former City officials, nonprofit leaders, and residential developers all agreed on one thing: City of Yes is a big fucking deal.
"I can't understate the importance of it," Been said. "The Adams administration is leaving that foundation for us to build on."
City of Yes allows developers to build taller apartment buildings near transit hubs; convert newer office buildings to housing; and, under a program called the Universal Affordability Preference (UAP), would let developers construct denser, taller towers so long as 20 percent of the additional housing allowed through the reforms is permanently affordable. City of Yes's changes also lessened or scrapped requirements to build parking space for cars alongside new housing, paving the way for more apartments.
"Everywhere we're building affordable housing, we're going to see a bit more because of City of Yes," said Rachel Fee, the executive director of the New York City Housing Conference, a pro-affordable housing development nonprofit.
And City of Yes is already having an impact. For example, a proposal to redevelop the Javits Center Marshaling Yards in Hell's Kitchen into housing could hold 860 more apartments than the local community board initially proposed, thanks to the zoning changes passed under City of Yes.
Those changes will help reverse a handful of early-aughts downzonings under Bloomberg's reign, which restricted development in certain areas to preserve "the character of our neighborhoods," he said at the time. In 2005, the City Council downzoned a 249-block swath of Bay Ridge, restricting development to single- or two-family homes. While the neighborhood won't see huge towers under City of Yes, it could see more affordable housing along Third, Fourth, and Fifth Avenues, which would qualify under the UAP program. Most of the neighborhood also saw its parking mandates reduced for new development under the City of Yes.
Elizabeth Street Garden haunts our pro-housing mayor
Looking only at City of Yes, maybe Adams could claim to be the most pro-housing mayor in recent history, based on the number of units rezoned during his administration, which outweighs his two predecessors. But Adams's housing record has been marred not just by his many political scandals, but by his abrupt move to kill the plans for housing on the site of Elizabeth Street Garden.
In June, Adams canceled a more than decade-long plan to build 123 apartments for low-income and formerly homeless seniors on the garden site, public land that the garden leased from the City, in exchange for a deal to build affordable housing on three other nearby sites that could take years to come to fruition. The about-face could make developers less willing to partner with the City on affordable projects, said Howard Slatkin, the executive director of the Citizens Housing & Planning Council and a former deputy executive director for Strategic Planning at DCP.
"This kind of action sends a chilling message to the community that works in partnership with the City on affordable housing," Slatkin said. "The people working together to build this project didn't include the people who made this decision. It's zombie-ism. It's like NIMBY-ism from beyond the grave."
The reversal also gives a playbook to wealthy opponents of affordable housing to "just keep fighting" until a City administrator changes their mind, Been said.
But the groups behind the Elizabeth Street Garden project, dubbed Haven Green, intend to follow that playbook too. Kieran Harrington, CEO of RiseBoro Community Partnership, one of Haven Green's developers, said that they plan to "press the case as best we can" and hoped it was "an anomalous circumstance and, maybe, that it will be reconsidered."
How much credit does Adams deserve?
The decision to kill the Haven Green project and save the garden, after the City spent years defending the project in court, is a mark against Adams's housing legacy. It's also a move that clearly separates two phases of his mayoralty: his early administration, which got City of Yes passed under former First Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer, and his post-indictment, Randy Mastro-era, who announced that the City would axe the Haven Green project and who took over after Torres-Springer and three other deputy mayors quit as Adams cozied up to President Donald Trump to evade federal prosecution.
Killing the Haven Green development "contradicted the mayor's message on City of Yes in a major way," Fee said. Can Adams really claim to be the city's most pro-housing Mayor while at the same time, shelving a development for senior affordable housing?
It's a question that will be answered over decades, as the City of Yes rezoning starts to reshape the five boroughs. In Harrington's view, despite the Elizabeth Street Garden of it all, Adams still deserves some of his pro-housing cred.
"I don't think you judge anyone on their worst moment," Harrington said. "I think you judge them on the balance of their experience. And on balance, the Adams administration has been a friend and a partner."